Obscure elements of D&D you would love to rescue

[Lwaxy]

I have enough red points, can I have a blue one?

Seriously, my point was not that people shouldn't GET those extra rules, but that they are not necessary to get players involved. The member I addressed this to seems to have understood that. Sorry for being unclear.

Yes, I have house rules dealing with players building and adding stuff in some campaigns, although they are not set in stone as they need to be flexible. Lots of other GMs probably have, too. Yes, I get that not every GM has the time or mind to do that, but they COULD in theory.

But this is taking the topic on an unnecessary sidetrack. Move along, these are not the posts you are looking for.

 

[Herschel]

I don't mind bringing characters back from the dead, but bring back REINCARNATE and put it in earlier than resurrection. I've used it in my 4E game and it's a lot of fun if your character is ganked and you'll get to come back but you're not quite sure what you'll come back as. A decently built character will still be just fine but it adds a little chaos to the game. I've even used a Resurrection botch where the character became a Vryloka when the priest botched it.

Give the poor Kenku back his wings. Maybe a PC can't fly all the time without being broken but let him fly a little.

 

[Lwaxy]

That reminds me I need to set up for reincarnate to be used more often. I remember someone more or less killing himself a lot because the forms he came out of were unsuitable to a monk.

I absolutely love my elf-gone-dwarf PC.

 

[howandwhy99]

I'd like to see the newer focus on moving opponents around the battlefield maintained. I don't mean making it a surefire piece of every fight, just bringing in more interesting movement options to keep combat fluid. I thought that was interesting.

Also, fatigue and the basic necessities rules. Exposure damage, LLI (life level index), food and drink charts, disease saves, insanities (mental well being), etc. Not necessarily as they were, but having them as a option where ignoring them is detrimental, but handling them is inconsequential in almost every situation.

 

[howandwhy99]

double post

 

[slobster]

Seriously, my point was not that people shouldn't GET those extra rules, but that they are not necessary to get players involved. The member I addressed this to seems to have understood that. Sorry for being unclear.

Yep, I understood you. It's all good .

To answer the original question again, mage-dueling. There were rules for it on one of the 3E Forgotten Realms supplements, and I had my party wizard face off in a series of mage duels in a town festival the party came across, wild-west quickdraw style. Heckuva lot of fun, even if the actual rules themselves were a bit flimsy - the idea was cool and I'd like to see them done better.

Actually, there were rules for actual sword dueling in one of the OA books. Iajutsu skill rules. Those rules were even worse than the mage-dueling rules, but duels in the original d10 L5R game were great fun, so I know they can be done well.

I guess I just like dueling .

 

[FireLance]

I don't know if this can be considered an "obscure" element, but I liked the 4e disease track and thought it should be used more generally and more often. I think it's been used for curses before, and in another thread, I suggested that it could be used for poison, too.

By tweaking the time between rolls to recover/worsen you can give the PCs an effective time limit which can be short, absolute and personal (the PCs have been poisoned and have only hours to discover the antidote before they succumb) or long, gradual and less personal (each day of delay means that more villagers will die from disease).

 

[Hussar]

Thouls. I want Thouls back in the game.

And, speaking of B/X - I'd love to see a campaign world similar to the Known World that you had in the back of the old Expert book put into the DMG. Yeah, we had a town in 4e, and we've had a couple of dungeons in the DMG's of various editions, but, AFAIK, Expert is the only time we had an entire campaign world presented. Bare bones as all get out, but, certainly enough to get a campaign off the ground.

I wouldn't even mind if it was pretty vanilla fantasy too.

 

[FireLance]

Thouls. I want Thouls back in the game.

Seconded. I hardly ever used them, but I definitely remember them.

On a related point, another monster I'd like to see return is the ki-rin.

 

[Lwaxy]

Thouls. I want Thouls back in the game.

And, speaking of B/X - I'd love to see a campaign world similar to the Known World that you had in the back of the old Expert book put into the DMG. Yeah, we had a town in 4e, and we've had a couple of dungeons in the DMG's of various editions, but, AFAIK, Expert is the only time we had an entire campaign world presented. Bare bones as all get out, but, certainly enough to get a campaign off the ground.

I wouldn't even mind if it was pretty vanilla fantasy too.

Eberron, Forgotten Realms?